


my boy builds coffins

by waldorph



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-25
Updated: 2011-02-25
Packaged: 2017-10-15 22:36:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph/pseuds/waldorph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk was a legend before he was even an hour old, and legends are never men.  They are tragedies and heroes and cautionary tales and they never grow up or grow old, they simply are.</p><p>Jim Kirk is a pain in Spock's ass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my boy builds coffins

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Мой мальчик мастерит гробы](https://archiveofourown.org/works/602588) by [Rainy_Elliot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainy_Elliot/pseuds/Rainy_Elliot)



> This was written for the first installment of the Universal Constant 'Zine, beta'd by **screamlet**.  
>  Translated [into Chinese](http://www.mtslash.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=89328&extra=) by **sugatasc**.

Jim should have died two times in his childhood (that Spock knows of--there may well be more).

Jim should never have made it out of his mother's womb, should have been destroyed with the car as it flew over the cliff.

Spock thinks that these have been excuses, comfortable truths Winona and Sam Kirk have wrapped themselves in: Jim is difficult because he shouldn't be here. Jim has taken hold of the universe and forced it to accept him, though Spock has difficulty imagining an infant doing so.

The logic of it is hardly important: Jim Kirk was a legend before he was even an hour old, and legends are never men. They are tragedies and heroes and cautionary tales and they never grow up or grow old, they simply are.

Jim Kirk is a pain in Spock's ass.

*

The first time Spock sees Jim Kirk kill someone, it's the sociopath who blew up Spock's planet and was responsible for the death of his mother and Jim's father and so Spock stands at his shoulder, the two of them pressed together and staring Nero into the mouth of the abyss. Watched him die with neither remorse nor pity.

Spock knows, as he nods with a flare of satisfaction when Jim glances over at him, that he would not have been able to do what _they_ have managed. That there is significance there.

"Did you do it for your father?" he asks Jim, later, much later, after an interminable meeting in which Spock gets snarled at for allowing Jim to take control and Jim gets snarled at for disobeying _all the orders_ (which isn't fair, Jim obeyed Pike's, just according to his selective interpretation of them). There are comments about Spock’s mother that set his teeth on edge, which makes him remember again that Nero took Spock’s mother but he took Jim’s father as well.

Jim shifts, a warm press against Spock's shoulder and huffs a laugh. "I wasn't even thinking about him," he says, and it is the truth. "He destroyed your planet," Jim adds, and Spock turns that over and over. “**Your planet”, not "Vulcan."

The wording matters, it always matters with Jim. The specifics: the details. Jim only seems black-and-white, but Spock knows better, even now. Suspects he will learn it more closely as time goes on.

Jim did it for Spock, and by "Spock" it could be Spock or his counterpart but Jim did it for _him_ and that—

Means something.

Enough that Spock gets on a ship and chooses his life's trajectory for selfish decisions. He left Vulcan for selfish reasons, he will leave her again, even in memory, to follow the promise of something (someone) else.

*

Spock is stronger than Jim physically. He can defeat him with moderate effort in hand-to-hand combat.

Spock _hesitates_ , though. Vulcans are a peaceful people, and it, like logic, is drummed into their heads from a young age. Spock entered the science track because of his ingrained pacifism: Defend oneself only in the most perilous of situations, otherwise one must endure, show mercy.

Jim does not hesitate, and quite possibly doesn't know how to. Mercy is, frequently, an afterthought, and never done for mercy’s own sake. Jim, if he stays his hand, wants something for his restraint: a treaty, the release of his crew, justice.

When his finger squeezes the trigger he does not pause to mourn the life lost, instead turns and presses his advantage, uses death to frighten or subdue or sometimes, in the worst scenarios, to charm.

If Spock is standing there he can, more often than not, keep things from reaching a boiling point.

This was not one of those times.

"I am fine," Spock insists when McCoy cuts the shirt off of him, yelling over his shoulder:

“Fucking M'Benga, the hell are you?!"

“Doctor,” Spock insists as he is forced down and Doctor M’Benga materializes at his other side and slides a hypo into his forearm.

"You are about to have a collapsed lung and are in shock," McCoy snarls back at him, which, three months in, Spock realizes is McCoy's way of caring.

The more vitriolic he gets, the more he cares.

Nyota stands at his bedside when he wakes and tells him in a carefully dispassionate voice about the way the Captain had slaughtered an army as it bore down on them, violent and ruthless. The people on the planet, Nyota says, negotiated a peace treaty right then and there.

Spock can tell that she is uncomfortable, somehow. That there is something that has been done _wrong_ \--that Kirk's actions are distasteful or frightening...that _Jim_ is frightening.

The people of the planet attacked them, herded them into an impossible position and meant to kill the lot of them.

Jim never kills without provocation, and Spock cannot find fault with him here. He does not know what to say to her, though she clearly expects some kind of response.

"Spock." It sounds wrenched out of him, surprised and pleased and rather insulting (to both Spock’s will to live and the medical staff’s abilities. Spock was only a little shot).

Spock turns his head and lifts an eyebrow. "As you can see I am alive."

"Glad to hear it. I want your report at 0800," Jim says, and then settles on the foot of Spock's biobed, ignoring Nyota as he folds his legs underneath him. He looks tired. "There's got to be a way to avoid that kind of shitshow."

"I will work with Mr. Scott to examine our sensors and our readouts better. Lieutenant, if you could look into the possibility of sonar read-backs to track movement on a planet?"

She looks at him, and then nods. "Of course, Commander," she says, and Jim glances down and there is a smile twisting his lips as she walks away that reeks of victory. Spock pokes him with an impatient toe.

"Bloodbath?" he prompts.

"Oh, you missed the good part," Jim says immediately, and launches into an expansive retelling which sufficiently distracts Spock from the fact that he is regrowing lung tissue and a rib.

*

Spock is very bad when someone dies because he cannot empathize in a meaningful way. Vulcan is so distant from the rest of the Federation culturally; they are so _different_ , but after two years the crew has learned to understand; not to take offense.

He watches Jim when members of the crew die, because it is fascinating. Jim gives moving speeches, and either he knows all of them intimately or he is very good at faking it (Spock suspects it is a combination of the two). Jim takes each death personally; and they can see that. Spock can see that.

Jim looks hard and fierce and the crew loves him for it: for the obvious desire to avenge the deaths. Jim Kirk's moral code is very Codex Hammurabi.

Jim would make an excellent Romulan or Klingon, Spock sometimes thinks, and then finds Jim in his rooms writing letters to parents and spouses and families explaining how their loved one died in carefully edited language. If all the letters are to believed, theirs is a crew full of singularly heroic individuals.

Perhaps it is.

*

Spock is going to freeze to death out here, he realizes. There is absolutely no hope: they could not read lifesigns on the planet because of atmospheric interference and Spock _knows_ this is not the landing site. His tricorder is useless: whatever is interfering with the ship's sensors is also interfering with his on the ground. His hands are beginning to numb, and he tries to remember what to do when caught in snow.

Everything is eerily still, painted in white and blue from the moon and shadows and snow, and it is ethereally spectacular. At least, he thinks, he will not die on an ugly planet. He then spares a moment to be appalled at his ability to prioritize and starts to create a snow hovel to curl up into for the night, when the wind will assuredly pick up.

He also curses the fact that he had assumed that on a mission designed specifically for scientific inquiry and not the expansion of the Federation he would be safe, and his belief that for a brief sample-collecting endeavor he would not require a coat.

"It's like snow planets have it in for us," Jim notes. Spock turns around slowly, and wonders at the probability that he is hallucinating. It is slightly unnerving to realize that the likelihood that Jim is real is higher than the likelihood that Spock is losing his mind to the cold.

They are outliers, Spock decides: calculations do not apply because there are scarcely laws of physics which bind them.

"At least I didn't ship you here and leave you to the ravenous aliens," Jim muses, tugging Spock up as he contemplates past wrongs. "That sucked, by the way. In case I haven’t mentioned it."

"I maintain you deserved it," Spock says, and Jim laughs, taking Spock’s hand and walking, tugging him along, Spock trailing a half-step behind him. "Do you know where you are going, Captain?"

Jim laughs again and brings him out into a clearing, raises his phaser and shoots into the sky. "Nope, but if they can't find us they're all fucking fired."

His hand is warm around Spock's, and Spock can still feel the cold deep in his skin, slowing his heart rate and lowering his blood pressure but he stands, leans into Jim, and waits for rescue.

Lieutenant Commander Scott latches onto the flare, Ensign Chekov triangulates their position, and Doctor McCoy is waiting to treat Spock for hypothermia and no one bats an eye at the fact that Spock keeps hold of Jim's hand all the way to medbay where he is sedated and treated.

*

The first time Spock kisses Jim, they have killed over a thousand people.

Jim sits, cold and frightening, on the bridge and they all flank him, school their faces into something bleak and capable of wiping out a destroyer-class ship.

Spock feeds him data the others send to him (Chekov: vulnerable spots on the enemy ship; Sulu: enemy ship layout and population; Nyota: four more ships behind them, cloaked and waiting based on subspace interference; Scott: they can kill everyone on the ships without breaking a sweat), Jim glancing at the screen by his hand in the chair's arm.

There was a Klingon prison planet, but the inmates took over, created a fleet, and they call themselves Gritash, not Klingons. There are children aboard all five ships.

"We will have your women for our own," the Gritashi leader, Captain Chokkal snarls. "You are one and we are legion."

"This is your last chance," Jim replies, even and almost friendly until you _look_ at him. "We will not surrender and you are in Federation space. We will arrange a contact between your leaders and Starfleet Com—"

"Don't presume to patronize me!" Chokkal roars, and Jim slants a glance over to Spock, who nods minutely. Negotiation is futile, and their only hope is to fire and jump into Warp 8. He conveys this to Sulu, who indicates it can be done.

"Fire!" Chokkal commands, and Jim says quietly,

"Sulu, now."

They are gone, long gone, before anyone can do readings. Jim says that they destroyed the first ship, a direct hit, but leaves the other four ambiguous, hints that they will likely be disabled, and instructs Sulu to hail Starfleet to inform them of the Gritashi's position.

Spock knows they are all destroyed.

He finds Jim in his quarters, cleaning his phaser again and again. It gleams with quiet menace.

"Jim."

Jim looks up. "There were children on board. Families."

"There were also hostages," Spock points out. "Women kidnapped and forced against their will."

"And I get to make the decision to put them down like dogs?" Jim asks, snorting, and Spock leans down and takes the phaser from him before he does something foolish and petty and shoots the wall, creating a vacuum and sucking them all into deep space.

"You made the decision to protect your crew."

Jim makes a face, and this a crisis of confidence, surely. Spock leans in, kisses him firmly, sliding his lips over Jim's and cradling the back of his neck. Jim stares at him when he pulls away, blue eyes too bright.

"Stop," Spock commands, and Jim surges forward, all teeth and biting, stinging kisses, hands that scrape across Spock's skin and Spock is on his back, Jim deep inside him and Spock thinks that this is what they need: this is all they need.

They are _fine_ , and better than.

*

Jim's performance evaluation at the end of the five years is mostly glowing. They adore him because he is attractive, popular and charming. They love him because the media loves him.

There are notes and whispers, though, if you know where to look. Hints that there is a high rate of civilian casualty; that the use of fatal force is authorized to often; phasers are set to 'stun' too infrequently.

There are other notes, deeper, regarding psychological evaluations done on Jim as a child and as a cadet, and then again when he went into command. That Jim Kirk's morality is ambiguous at best. He will protect what he deems to be his at the cost of everything around him. He has a stunning disregard for life, for other people's property. He is too result-driven, Machiavelli and Hammurabi and Alexander the Great in one man.

They have all learned to be cautious, to treat people as hostile until they reveal themselves otherwise. Too many dead, even if it was only 3% of their crew. It feels like more when you know their faces, their hopes and their potential. It feels like more when you look at their bodies or can’t find them; just know that they’re lost.

And then, in the end of the report, Spock finds this passage:

_"Commander Spock and Captain Kirk have an unusually close relationship, even taking into account their positions. It can be speculated that they create a closed feedback loop: Kirk looks to his First for regulation and moderation and Commander Spock fails to supply it. Indeed, he appears just as reckless and dismissive of an individual's life, prizing that of his captain's over all others. It might be argued that fully 57% of the casualties of encounters with the USS _Enterprise_ were needless, and occurred as a direct result of the violent nature of this Captain and First Officer."_

Spock scrolls up to note the author—Admiral Fujiwara.

He can see her from the window of officer housing. She is across the green, holding court with her students and sycophants. She teaches ethics at the Academy, wants to make a name for herself and has evidently decided that Spock and Jim will be the casualties of her career. Spock's phaser rests comfortingly against his thigh.

She isn't a problem yet, but she will be. Jim's first, best destiny is to be the captain of a starship: Spock will not allow anyone, much less an admiral who has forgotten what the galaxy looks like from the stars, to interfere with that destiny.

"Hey," Jim says, coming out of the shower and settling behind Spock, mouthing his neck, warm and naked. "Wanna fuck?"

Spock puts aside the PADD and gives Jim a withering look.

"Stupid question," Jim agrees, laughing as Spock takes off his shirt and allows himself to be pulled and arranged to Jim's liking, stripped and laid bare and opened— _full_.

Spock won't let anything touch Jim.

He’ll stop it by any means necessary.


End file.
